Monday Harvest

Another week and another attempt to kill my tomatoes…My tomatoes were dying: browning foliage and no more growth.  I fed them about 10 days ago but it didn’t seem to have helped.  After I spent much time researching tomato diseases on the computer to no avail I went out to the tomatoes and this time had a quick feel of the soil – soaking wet.  I’ve been killing them with love it would seem… I stopped  watering for 5 days and the decline has been halted (or at least I think it has…).  I’m hoping they will recover and put on some more fruit…in the meantime I harvested these (and a few more that didn’t make the photo shoots):

I am harvesting the tomatoes a little early as, what I think is, mice are taking them if I leave them on the plant much longer.  I was looking forward to my first Black Cherry tomatoes when they suddenly disappeared off the vine.

The mice don’t seem interested in the cucumbers though which are producing well.  I am harvesting at a rate of one or two most days, occasionally more – like Wednesday when I made some more Bread & Butter Cucumbers.

This week has once again been the week of the potato.  I harvested the first lot of Pink Fir Apple potatoes – these grown in a 40cm tub.  I got about 1.5kg.  Interestingly the potatoes don’t have the little knobbly bits I normally associate with Pink Fir Apples, this despite the seed potatoes having them.  I also harvested another 650g of Pink Fir Apples from the main bed and they didn’t have the knobs either.  I made a lovely potato salad with some of the first batch and they were delicious but possibly slightly more floury than I would normally expect so perhaps they crossed with another variety?  I may have just overcooked them of course, or left them in the garden slightly too long….

I also harvested the tub of Dutch Cream potatoes which look superb but I’m yet to cook any of them.  I got 1.5kg from a 40cm tub which seems to be the optimum harvest from this size of pot in my growing conditions.

My most exciting harvest this week – for me anyway was parsley – I know it sounds a bit boring but I love it and I have only been able to cut the occasional sprig rather than a decent amount as my plants were a bit young.  They are now mature enough for a decent harvest though:

Actually all my herbs are doing well at the moment.  I dried some oregano this week, harvested the first of the garlic chive flowers, which I used in rice paper rolls along with some Thai Basil, Vietnamese mint and common mint.  My basil is producing pesto sized quantities, and the sage and lemon balm are both doing well.

My other harvests were primarily green – lots of salad leaves, green beans and celery which is now big enough to harvest the occasional stalk from.

When one harvest is never enough simply head over to Daphne’s Dandelions for harvests from around the world.